When I turned into a teenager I started realising the effects that certain foods had on my body. I used to think I had a healthy diet which later on I realised was not the case for various reasons.
At the age of 14, I started realising I had tiny bumps on my arms and I had no clue what it was and didn't worry as they were not painful. Then over time, my mum had to keep picking me up from school as I had the most excruciating stomach pains. I found it hard to even stand up straight.
I was getting rather uncomfortably bloated after pretty much every meal. My mum told me that it could be gluten so she decided to take me to a food allergy clinic to see what came up.
The results came back and I was intolerant ( not allergic) to everything that contains gluten, which is pretty much a lot of different types of wheat, pasta, bread, cereal, beer, etc.
The woman told me that I had a leaky gut and if I continued eating gluten constantly, when I was older I was going to have some serious problems with my gut.
You see, the lining of the gut is supposed to be strong and tight, keeping food, waste, and microbes inside the digestive tract. Gluten can cause the release of an inflammatory protein called zonulin, which opens up the junctions in the lining of the gut and causes gaps. This allows particles to leak into the bloodstream ( where they don't belong) and create an immune response. Not only was gluten harming my gut it was also harming my brain, my mood, my energy levels, my skin and so much more.
As a teen who loved pasta and bread, this was not good news to me and I didn’t want to accept the fact that I had to stop eating gluten.
Over the past 3 years, I have tried to stop eating gluten multiple times, but I always ended up giving in to the addiction that I had to gluten. Whenever I tried to stop eating gluten I had withdrawal symptoms and constantly craved it.
It was only last year that I started to get fed up with the way gluten affected me. And this was when I started getting into cooking and changing my lifestyle.
So one day I decided to completely cut it out of my diet as I was fed up with self-sabotaging. I have been off gluten for about 4 months now and I feel so much better.
I no longer get severely bloated and I no longer get super tired and the stomach pains have completely gone away. However, I feel so much better now not just because of cutting out gluten but because I have changed a lot in my diet. I also take my probiotics every day to help the healing process of my gut. It wasn't easy being able to completely stop eating gluten, however day by day I keep finding different recipes to adapt to my new diet.
It is a lot of trial and error as gluten-free baking doesn't always work as well as planned but I have now discovered how to make some delicious things that aren't even that time-consuming.
I always used to think that I was going to have to give up the foods I loved like pasta and bread etc but that's not necessarily the case. I don't normally eat loads of pasta and bread much nowadays just because I never really crave it anymore but if I do want some bread I always eat organic gluten-free bread made out of chia and quinoa for example and it’s delicious.
Even if you are not intolerant to gluten I would still recommend reducing how much gluten you eat. Modernized bread is not made like it was back in the day. The wheat that our ancestors ate is very different from the wheat we eat today.
If you are eating bread I highly suggest buying organic as it does not have the chemicals that non-organic bread has that they sell at your average supermarket.
And if you are thinking of going gluten-free I suggest not to buy from the free from section in the supermarkets because the products are not tasty (trust me I have tried them) and are most probably riddled with nasty ingredients and chemicals.
When you first start your gluten-free journey you may experience withdrawal symptoms and feel worse than before, but trust me it's worth it. I also highly suggest taking supplements for your gut microbiome like the ones we sell with Elemental Wizdom. I would also like to say that the probiotics won’t do all the work for you, you will have to take control of your health and make changes for the better.
Love your gut back to life
Love Liliana
